Mr. G. G. Stroebe, an Experienced American Engineer, Appointed to Survey Mr. George G. Stroebe has been engaged by the Technical Committee of the Yangtze River Commission to survey the Yangtze River preparatory to the improvement of this great waterway of China. A party consisting of Mr. van der Veen, a member of the committee, Mr. T. C. Shoung, chief secretary of the Commission and Mr. Stroebe, in the capacity of the chief survey engineer, left Peking for Hankow a week ago to make a study of the river. They will go down the river from Hankow to Shanghai, and at Nanking will be joined by Mr. Yang Pao-ling, another member of the committee.
An office will be established at Shanghai, in charge of Mr. Stroebe, to carry on the survey work, and the head office is at Peking. After sufficient hydrologic data have been collected about the river, F. Palmer, the world-known hydraulic engineer, who made a trip to this country last year, will come out again from England to study the river and give his expert opinion with regard to the improvement of it. The importance of collecting enough data upon which a comprehensive scheme of improvement can safely be based is generally admitted.
The technical committee of the Commission under"which the survey work will be undertaken was organized in May. Its members are Mr. H. van der Veen, Adviser to the Ministries of the Interior and Communications; Mr., Yang Pao-ling, a well known Chinese hydraulic engineer; Mr. H. von Heidenstam, Chief Engineer of the Huangpu Conservancy Board; Mr. Chow Zion-yien, principal technical expert of the Ministry of the Interior; Capt. T. J. Eldridge, Customs Coast Inspector; Mr. Sun Ping-wang, Chief of the- Kianghuai Surveying Bureau; and Mr. Chen Shih Li, Chief of the Engineering Department of the Ministry of the Interior, who was unanimously elected chairman of the committee on account of his experience and seniority. All of these members are technical men of recognized ability. Sir Francis Aglen, Inspector-Genera]l of Customs, Mr. Sun Pao-chi, Director-General of the Customs Administration, and Mr. Kao Ling-wei, former Minister of Finance and Minister of the Interior, have given the undertaking much encouragement, and have done everything within their power to make it a success.
Mr. Stroebe has been in the Philippines Government service for more than 12 years as hydraulic engineer, in which capacity he designed irrigation, river and harbour works, and a municipal water supply. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1900 and the University of Michigan in 1904, and subsequently taught civil engineering in the latter university for four and a half years. Before going to the Philippine Islands worked for the United States Reclamation Service, which does all the government irrigation work, and also for the Canadian British Company as bridge designer. When the United States declared war upon Germany, Mr. Stroebe enlisted immediately and was assigned to the engineer officers training school at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was commissioned Captain of Engineers, and served in the Philippine Islands, where, at the close of the war, he was Colonel of the regiment of Engineers of the First Philippine Division of the United States Army.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.